6 votes

What ecelebrity did to my brain

2 comments

  1. [2]
    granfdad
    Link
    Posting this as a comment rather than body text as I don't want to sway the tone of the thread. Jreg is a youtuber that I intermittently keep up with, I know some of the inside jokes, but I don't...

    Posting this as a comment rather than body text as I don't want to sway the tone of the thread. Jreg is a youtuber that I intermittently keep up with, I know some of the inside jokes, but I don't really get that deep into the videos. I thought this was going to be a more serious video in the realm of "I want(ed) to die" and "I (Don't) Want To Be Famous", only to be (of course) hit with his classic infinitely-layered-hyper-satirical irony, or whatever it's called. This is the first time I think I've "seen through" one of his videos. It seems as though he's trying to maintain a sense of self awareness, but then be aware of the self awareness, but then be aware of that self awareness ad infinitum, while still keeping some level of sincerity. There's a half-baked refusal of his own defeatist point of view that's trying to present him as promoting both his direct words and the opposite of what they mean. He does this a lot, sure, but something about this specific video makes me mad. It's almost as if he's pretending to be aware of the insanity of the point he's making, without actually understanding.

    In my mind, this video is tragic a companion piece to "my external circumstances have nothing to do with how i feel", but it's the complete opposite. Instead of making fun of a refusal by [character] to examine their external circumstances in order to imply that it they do play a part in [character]'s mental health, he's very seriously putting all blame on external circumstances, while pretending that he believes his internal monologue is still in some way responsible.

    I don't know if any of this makes sense, my feelings are very conflicted and I haven't actually been able to knuckle down what exactly irks me so much about this video.

    5 votes
    1. Felicity
      Link Parent
      It definitely makes sense to me, and I think you put it better than I could (I tried for a while). Having watched his early work and really loved it, this one left me disappointed. I also haven't...

      It definitely makes sense to me, and I think you put it better than I could (I tried for a while).

      Having watched his early work and really loved it, this one left me disappointed. I also haven't really followed him closely, but I fully expected this video to have some sort of punchline to upend the vibe... No, not really.